Promoting Instructional Improvement: Experimental Evidence of Coaching That Benefits Teacher Practice

• In Event: 34.047 - Mentoring Matters, but How? Conceptualizing Mentoring Effectiveness From Preservice to In-Service Teaching

Abstract

Coaching is a common form of support provided to beginning teachers. Research suggests coaching can facilitate instructional improvement (Blazar & Kraft, 2014; Neuman & Cunningham, 2009) and lead to greater student achievement (Allen et al, 2011). Yet, we do not know whether some forms of coaching are better than others, despite existing evidence that there is wide variation in the kinds of coaching that teachers receive (Cornett & Knight, 2008).
Existing, mostly qualitative, literature on coaching, suggest that two features of coaching likely matter: (1) whether teachers have choice over what they are coached on (King & Newmann, 2011) and (2) whether feedback teachers receive is more targeted in focus (Grossman, 2015). Thus, this paper presents on one preparation program’s efforts to train some coaches in an approach to mentoring that focuses on a single domain of practice selected by the beginning teachers.
This randomized control trial (RCT) study assigned coaches (n=22) and first-year teachers (n=46) to intervention and control conditions. Intervention coaches were trained to address a single domain of practice across two observations; control coaches received regular program training and were instructed to address multiple domains of practice. This mixed methods study employed Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to test the change and growth in teachers’ instructional practices as measured by beginning and end of year observation scores. Additionally, extensive teacher interviews were conducted to (a) understand their perceptions about the types of coaching that benefit their practice and (b) why this approach to coaching supports new teachers.
Results indicated teachers assigned to the intervention condition, on average, performed 0.15 to 0.43 standard deviations better than control teachers. Results were not statistically significant, likely due to the lack of statistical power, but provide suggestive evidence that this type of coaching might improve teachers’ instructional practice. Analysis of interview transcripts suggest focusing on fewer domains of practice assists coaches in providing more explicit strategies while allowing beginning teachers to focus on improving in a single domain over an extended period of time.
This paper contributes to the literature on teacher coaching in a number of ways. Rather than focus on whether any coaching versus no coaching matters, this study contributes to existing empirical research by testing whether different kinds of coaching improve teaching quality more than others. Specifically, this study is, to my knowledge, the first to test whether teacher choice and targeted feedback results in better instructional practice as compared to teachers who have less choice and receive more general feedback. Moreover, it is one of the first to use an experimental design to test whether coaching of a particular form actually causes teachers to improve.

Author

• Kiel McQueen, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor